


The Afterlife of Grace Corrigan

by tristesses



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-18 15:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16997928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/pseuds/tristesses
Summary: Lexie Madison's life after death.





	The Afterlife of Grace Corrigan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/gifts).



Cassie was my everything in those days after the last, my shining star in the dark.

It wasn't for any trite reason, mind you; not because I thought she was the only one who could solve the mystery of my death, or because she wore my face. No, it was because she understood me, even if she took a while to realize it. My double, my twin, my living, beating heart. She was so good at what I did, slipping into another person's cast-off life.

I watched her, most of the time. You would have thought I'd haunt my friends, instead—my murderers, I suppose I should call them—but I thought it was a blessing upon them to let me slip away. Cassie threw a wrench into that plan, of course, and I do blame her for that, but I had to watch her, couldn't look away.

Cassandra Maddox. In the end, I loved her dearly. I could see, easily, how with a few tweaks in circumstance, the trajectories of our lives would have switched. Stick her in foster care, see how the loneliness cuts her into new, jagged people. Or take away her boyfriend/fiancé, leave her shattered in the aftermath of her partner/best friend's betrayal. She thought about discarding her life like a ragged sweater and finding a new one—she told you that herself. So keep that in mind when you judge me—you have to hold her to the same standards.

You notice my language here, I am sure. Such violence, all this cutting and shattering and breaking. Because that's what it takes. That's what needs to happen to turn someone like her into someone like me.

Make my mother live, and maybe Lexie Madison would never have been resurrected.

Maybe not.

* * *

  
You know you take the pain with you when you go, right? It never leaves you. I think it's there to remind you of your place on the mortal coil, a sort of reverse _memento mori_ for the dead. It's important to keep your sense of self, you see, if you want to stick around. And it's so easy to lose track of that, to let yourself float like a feather caught on an updraft, higher, higher, allow your consciousness to spread, to to allow the billions of sparkling minds like chiseled diamonds to envelop you, to be nothing but a whisper chilling the back of their necks, an insubstantial kiss on the breeze.

But I wasn't ready to go, do you understand that? I have been many people in my life, but no one could accuse me of not living it well. Grace, Lexie, May-Ruth, Mags Alanna Hazel—identities taken and tossed away, but life, that beautiful sweating, coarse, fragile thing—ah, life was sweet!

But I'm rambling. It's easy to do, now; I said it above, when I said I wasn't ready to go. Past tense. I'm getting closer now.

I was talking about pain.

The pathologist said I wasn't in much pain when I died. Bollocks, says I. Maybe the coroner's report can't explain it, but there's no such thing as a painless death. I could've slipped away in my sleep at age ninety-five and the passage from life to death would still have been a car crash on the astral plane, a series of screams and confusion and pain, horrible, utterly impossible pain, ripping across that barrier, that fatal divide. And you carry that echo with you, letting its weight bear down on your consciousness for the entire time you're awake in death.

You can forget that if you want. I know it's not an easy thing to hear.

* * *

  
I'm sure you're wondering about the baby. My baby. Did she stay with me when I died, like the pain did?

The answer is yes. She is a pinprick of remembered life inside me, a pulsing tiny thing. She would have been around the size of a bean when we died, so that's the size she is now, frozen like I am frozen.

I hope she doesn't hurt like I do. I hope she was small enough, unformed enough at the time I died, that the pain doesn't register, or the lingering fear, which is worse.

I wonder if Cassie Maddox will have children. I wonder what their names will be. Will Alexandra cross her mind?

Oh yes. Yes it will. Cassie can't shake off Lexie Madison that easily. I will always be there, a shadow a step ahead of her, the life I might have lived running parallel to hers. And I expect her to live it well, although I won't be here to watch her do it. She's strong, is Cassie. And so am I.

* * *

  
After Lexie Madison died for good, I sought them out, Abby and Rafe and Justin, and breathed a cold wind into their minds, scattering their memories of me like dust. All are of dust, and all return from dust. I was never much into religion, but that line—I didn't realize until then how true it was, how easy to was to wipe away the existence of a person. I wonder why more ghosts don't do that, why they leave their loved ones to mourn. It seems cruel to me.

And yes, they are my loved ones. I loved them all, in a way—May-Ruth loved Chad, Alanna loved Josephine and Victoria, and so on—but those four from Whitethorn House? Oh, they were special. We fit together like tectonic plates, and if our movements occasionally caused earthquakes, our little world remained solid. It wouldn't have forever, because there's no such thing as forever, but for a little while, we were beautiful.

I forgive them for killing me. I even forgive Daniel, who watched me die. I don't begrudge him that. I wouldn't have done the same thing, but I knew from the beginning he was like me, a little off-kilter, a little wrong. My double, dear Cassie, was right when she described that scene, the cigarettes burning low and scorching the tips of his fingers, my raspy breathing in the dark. Hands clenching and unclenching spasmodically, the torn tissue of my lungs fluttering with each inhale. Daniel watching me watch him, and both of us knowing how it would end.

He didn't do it out of malice or revenge. Trust me on that. I understand where he was coming from. Where I was compelled to shed the things that tied me down, Daniel did the opposite and tried to squeeze them tight, not realizing that everything cracks under pressure. A fundamental miscalculation on his part, and one on mine, but true to our natures.

* * *

  
It was nice, talking to you. I know we didn't have much time together, and the conversation was awfully one-sided, but it was a simple, nice thing, unburdened by the tensions that held each of my fragile personas together. I can tell you anything and you'll nod and accept it, because you think you know me, now. After all, you read Cassie's story, and between the lines, you read mine, or a mirror of what my life could have been.

I think it's time for me to go now, though. Go like I've always gone, leaping into the unknown, unafraid, roaring to a new home like the very soul of freedom. Yes, it's time to go. I hope you understand.


End file.
